FW: school board interview

I got this from Madame Gloria late last night--

-----Original Message-----
From: Gloria Ferris
[mailto:gloria.ferrisATgmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 11:32 PM
To: Timothy A. Ferris
Subject: school board interview

Dear Tim-

Many of you know that I applied for the open position on the Cleveland Municipal School board. I am writing this email to let you know that I am sitting down with Mayor Frank Jackson for a face-to-face interview.

Yes, I made it through the nominating committee selection process and now have the opportunity to sit down with Mayor Jackson this Friday afternoon and talk about what I think may be the number one issue for our city's future--the education of its children.

I wrote this post http://www.gloriaferris.net/2008/04/mayor-jackson-asked-and-i-responded/ on my blog as to why I had decided to put my hat in the ring. I am sorry that the click thru to the application does not work, but my friend George Nemeth has had technical problems with Brewed Fresh Daily where the link was stored, but you have the basics included in the post.

I want to thank those of you who encouraged me to apply. It has solidified my thinking and I will continue to express the need for huge amounts of investment to change our educational system into one that can prepare our students for the new knowledge economy.

Today, a friend stopped over and when I told him that I had secured an interview with Mayor Jackson. He told me to sit down because we were going to role-play. He would be the mayor and I would be me. He then asked me the questions that he thought Mayor Jackson might ask. At least, they were the ones important to my friend. If anyone would like to email me a question to help me prepare, please do.

Gloria

they're doin' it in Knoxville, too

Free Press : Is Tennessee Ready for AT&T to Enter Cable Market? Here's an intelligent piece from The Knoxville News Sentinel about AT&T trying to pull off the same full-court-press offensive in Tennessee that it is in Ohio, regarding delivery of cable services.

There are so few positives and so many negatives to the legislation that I cannot really see why it's still alive and kicking, unless the money's talking just too, too loud to our elected and appointed employees.

The AT$T cable-delivery behemoths we've seen--across from the car barns off Pearl Road and up and down poor Clifton Boulevard--seem to be especially vulnerable to all sorts of disruption. They're hastily contrived and cheaply installed. I think they ought to be put below grade, first of all, for security purposes, then second, for shielding, and then third, for appearance.

The nasty evidence we see of AT$T's late-stage attempt at entry into the cable market, when they're losing telephone market share to VOIP providers, is sort of sad. They've been outflanked and now are lumbering around trying to respond with the quickest-but-not-the-best maneuver to gain a toehold--the technology seems not to be too well thought through, the design is barely sustainable. They are desparate. They want to stay alive, they want to stay in the game, they want to do it on our backs. We've found these past few years, with VOIP telephone delivery, that they've overcharged us for years. They've taken our discretionary savings dollars to themselves and back to Wall Street.

We don't owe them anything. And they don't really owe us customers anything, either, besides whatever service we contract to pay for. Remember that their first duty is to the shareholders, not the customers. And they're not good neighbors.

great news from Tremont

Plain Press: The Community Newspaper Serving Cleveland's West Side Neighborhoods -- great article here about Sammy Catania providing new leadership at the Tremont nonprofit, news about reinvolving the neighbors, expanding wi-fi using local contractors, security cameras to enhance safety, branding with a logo that sounds attractive and cool, fostering transparency and communication, building out the community, strengthening the networks already there. This bears watching, perhaps emulating.

Democreeps already in a feeding frenzy

Democrats Seek Unpaid Taxes, Setting Up Clash - New York Times--Here's an article about the new creeps on the block already looking for more money--from waitresses, hairdressers, babysitters, handymen, web-page designers, and bloggers with ads in sidebars. Don't let them fool you that they're going after "small businesses"--their easiest marks are the sole proprietors, those who can least afford to defend themselves, who can least afford the time off to go through abusive audits. They are shameless parasites feeding on their fellow man. They are trained to harass you until it makes no sense for you to fight any more, to disallow deductions and to quibble to make their quotas, and to blindly promote the best interests of the IRS, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve Bank as they mindlessly ruin businesses, credit, and lives, not to mention the very communities they themselves try to live in. Do you think our local COSE will take a stand for us small fry against the IRS? Here's an excerpt from the TIMES:

Congressional Democrats, hoping to finance an ambitious agenda without raising taxes, are on a collision course with the Bush administration about pursuing the potentially vast amount of money that people hide from the Internal Revenue Service. House and Senate Democrats say the government could collect as much as $100 billion more a year by whittling the tax gap — the unpaid taxes, mostly on unreported earnings, that the I.R.S. estimated was about $300 billion a year....
Based on an analysis of audited tax returns from 2001, the I.R.S. recently estimated that the government lost $290 billion that year as a result of underreporting and underpayment of taxes. More than 80 percent of that loss stemmed from underreporting by individuals, not corporations. And the biggest problems were with people in business for themselves, who earned income that was not reported to the I.R.S. on W-2 forms or on the Form 1099 that businesses file when they pay independent contractors. The I.R.S. estimated that it lost $109 billion on unreported business income, almost all of that from sole proprietors, like painters, plumbers, dry cleaners, florists, limousine drivers and restaurant owners. Small-business lobbying groups have begun to mobilize against proposals intended to reduce the tax gap. Two of the biggest trade associations in Washington, the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business, organized the Coalition for Fairness in Tax Compliance in December to address lawmakers about proposals that might burden law-abiding business owners. “I’m focused on avoiding the wrong solutions,” said Macey Davis, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents more than 600,000 small companies, half of which have fewer than five employees. “We’re not out to protect noncompliance. We’re out to protect those who are compliant and whose businesses could be hurt.”

The Krum Kult [sic] of Personality

Last Thursday I mentioned we had a great day with Meet.The.Bloggers, and it started in the middle of the afternoon down at the Akron-Canton Airport (CAK) where we talked to two other bloggers, Fred Krum (View from 1228' at http://www.akroncantonairport.com/person2.htm) and Kristie Van Auken (It's a Trip at http://www.akroncantonairport.com/person1.htm). We met Kristie in September at the Akron Marketing Association presentation we gave on business blogging, and she said we just had to meet Fred, because he was a genius, and an early adapter, and could therefore understand implicitly what we were trying to do with MTB. She was right.

The podcast of the interview will be posted soon, but I wanted to alert you to it, and how Fred began years ago to combat the rap that CAK was a place to find "small planes, high fares, going nowheres." We sat in a newly revamped terminal that just felt good, and found out about the values available from carriers such as AirTran and Frontier, and the great fares to great places like New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Fort Myers. Fred focuses his staff on providing a "great experience" replicating best practices, and partnering with the best that there is. He is clever and raised by Jesuits and uses phrases such as "a charisma bypass" alongside sayings such as "the only thing that brings freedom is discipline." He points to the fact that CAK may be a market-maker for low-priced fares in this region, and that it has "made commuting possible" between this area and Florida, and perhaps even NYC. One CAK early innovation is something sensible they call "the cell phone lot." Gloria uses the phrase/slogan "a better way to be best," and we go on to the fact that CAK is an extension of the Akron/Canton Chamber of Commerce and does some heavy local advertising promotion, unlike Hopkins where we get all the national ad things we see everywhere else we go. The CAK brand is also its philosophy ("A Better Way To Go"), and they acknowledge that the first rule of leadership is "You gotta get excited." There's no doubt that free wifi is one of the first things to implement in a place that wants to attract and serve the public, and the session wraps with reiteration of the first rule of life: "You gotta know what you want and then go after it."

This session is a short course in leadership, service, public relations, and promotions, all integrated and timely and on time, too.

Our next stop that evening was at Midtown Brews, hosted by Jeff Fridman and Webtego, to talk to Hunter Morrison. And speaking of brews, CAK has Great Lakes Brewing Company as a showcased, featured business partner & vendor.

heavy day with Meet.The.Bloggers

Heavy, in the '60s sense. Meaningful. Rich. Rewarding. Valuable. Talked to Fred Krum at CAK mid-afternoon and Hunter Morrison at Midtown Brews early evening. More tomorrow. Tired. Sleepy.

PD starting to call it like it is

Refinance, Subject to Oversight--This reporting and editorializing the PD is doing on the bond job and the cozy arrangements is what we need more of in this town. We could also use even more numbers, less speculation, to see how this might actually benefit the public.

Avoiding the appearance of impropriety is what is called for, and we don't really have that in this situation. A school superintendent at Sanders' level should have enough common sense not to present such a lucrative target for criticism. What we do have, unfortunately, is a lot of the hired help telling us what they have to and don't have to do, and this doesn't sit well in a city that's continually conned by it's employees. We already have another embarrassment, regardless of how the deal eventually goes down.

It's time to shuck the third-world-country image and get on with ethical business practices.

we need to take care of our warriors

Cleveland officer investigated on claim he beat suspect--I really don't know what is at play here, but in general what we as a community need to remember is that, when we pay a policeman to go to war for us--the regular economy--against the drug economy, we need to support him as he uses his best judgment in an attempt to get our drug bait back. What does 5.5# of cocaine cost, and who pays for that if the drug dealer decides to play cute and keeps it hidden in his house? We paid the policeman to use bait to trap the dealer, and we also charged him with recovering the bait. Criminals need to understand that they give up certain rights and put themselves at unnecessary risk when they commit crimes and then fail to cooperate.

We must protect our warriors, first and foremost. We must protect our community. Those who work against the best interests of the community, who take from the community and make it sicker and weaker by distributing drugs and robbing people of their potential, deserve no sympathy from the court system. We need to write special rules of engagement when it comes to the war on drugs.

Callahan's pizza run brings a community together: there's a meeting here tonight

Callahan’s Cleveland Diary » Blog Archive » Robbed at gunpoint--Heads up. There's a meeting around these parts tonight. Let our councilman [can you believe the size of the City Hall fonts? Where's the Tech Tsar?] tell you about it [emphasis mine]--

FYI – there will be a Crime & Safety meeting this Thursday, Jan. 25th at 7:00 pm at the Archwood UCC, which will be utilized to hopefully squelch rumors on the street relative to the murder on Riverside. These other crime trends will also be discussed. In addition, with assistance from the local development corp., the 2nd District Police and Huntington Bank, we’re holding a Brooklyn Centre Merchant’s meeting next Monday morning at 7:30 am at the Brooklyn Centnre Huntington Branch for area businesses to discuss crime trends in the commercial district (a few recent break-ins), as well as what more can be done to have businesses better coordinate safety strategies.

On the bright side, we saw Bill at the MTB session with Jim Rokakis last night, and he reports that the hoodied perps DID NOT take his pizza that fateful night.

I was trying to look at the positives of all this early this morning as I took out the rubbish and shoveled the drive and the walk, and the only thing that occurred to me was to be thankful that my mittens had a trigger finger.

I'm sure we'll come up with more and more positives at the meeting tonight.

doggie dinner

Make your own bulgogi at home - Slashfood--When I worked for the US occupation/expeditionary forces over in Korea in the early '70s, the goon chiefs (village officials) once invited us Ugly Americans downtown, brought in the dancing girls, got us all cranked up on beer and rice wine, and fed us the greatest bulgogi, but then told us in the middle of the meal that our marinated feast was dog-based, not beef-based. Some of my compatriots blew chunks; others smiled wryly and put down their chopsticks; I called their bluff and asked for more. It's all in the marinade and the tenderizing.

Now, where in the Cleveland area can we score some kimchee/kimchi that doesn't have all sorts of salt and MSG in it as preservative? All the stuff we see in the stores around here comes out of Chicago or New York and has way too much in the way of additives and preservatives. Kimchee is one of the best accompaniments to bulgogi, and both of them together will keep you well all winter.